Why? Apple does that. You cannot install an app to IOS without both apple review and paying apple money per install. That review still enforces apple policies (famously the "no non-apple-gets-30%-payments" policy which is now ironically suspended on the US side. Ironically and temporarily)
And, Apple was recently fined €500 million and ordered to comply with the DMA law.
> The DMA requires that app developers should be able to inform customers of alternative purchasing options outside of the App Store, and direct customers to those alternative payment options, free of charge. Apple’s rules currently do not allow for this …
(plus: criminal contempt referrals for "willfully" violating court order to stop doing that in the US too and lying to the judge and trying to cover it up!)
> Separately, the commission has taken a preliminary view that Apple has not complied with its obligation to allow for the distribution of apps outside of the App Store, i.e. its support for third-party app marketplaces in the European Union is not good enough. The commission says developers are disincentivized from doing so due to the required agreement of alternative business terms, which includes the Core Technology Fee. It also says Apple has purposely made the process of using alternative app marketplaces too difficult and burdensome on end users.
a) Notarization is an automated process to check for apps that would compromise the integrity of their platform. It doesn't care about the content or type of app you're building.
b) Apple is charging a fee for their SDKs similar to Unreal Engine, Square, Mapbox, Microsoft etc. Has been the standard in the industry since forever.
Quite naive take, you don't have to use any of your examples to deploy to Android, Windows, Linux or MacOS. It would be more like Microsoft charging a per-install fee on using the Win32 APIs which sounds outrageous.
Apple is using all power-plays to keep their market controlled firmly by them, and EU doesn't like it.
Having to pay 99$ per year to develop apps for your own devices that you've already purchased is also outrageous.
I get that Apple is doing a good job keeping app-store safe for it's users, but it doesn't make up being so actively hostile to user freedom.
I like the walled garden but its a bit of an exaggeration to say they are doing a good job.
Just last week, while looking for a password app, they had a "validator" app with in-app purchases using the old google authenticator logo in the #1 position. Worse it was an ad; someone saw all of that, both as an ad and as an app, and let it go.
Sorry, Apple iOS is not a Wall Garden, it is a Prison Cell. A Wall Garden / Gated Community allows for the deployment of personal security such as a home security system with monitoring company, video surveillance, and personal security guards. Apple does not allow any if that. You cannot even preemptively block known Command and Control services, best C&C servers operate in plain sight, such as X-Twitter and Facebook on iOS.a
>Quite naive take, you don't have to use any of your examples to deploy to Android, Windows, Linux or MacOS. It would be more like Microsoft charging a per-install fee on using the Win32 APIs which sounds outrageous.
"sounds outrageous" is a pretty weak justification for regulator action. Paying for a browser probably sounds equally as outrageous, but with the way anti-trust is going with Chrome/Google, that seems like a very real possibility. Moreover, why should the government should be in the basis of regulating business models? If Apple wants to charge for access to its SDKs, and it pays the price through less apps for its users, so be it.
Yeah sorry IANAL, the fact stands: EU thinks Apple is exploiting their market position to lock users down, EU doesn't like it and will make Apple comply.
If Apple wants to be on the EU market they will have to comply with EU regulations, and if regulations are lacking regulators will regulate.
Whether you suck up to Apple or the EU is your opinion. I live in EU and I'm happy to see the otherwise sparsely regulated megacorporations from USA be regulated to not exploit my fellow union citizens.
Apple has also shown repeatedly that they're unwilling to comply by implementing their own shitty interpretation of our rules (ship a fucking USB-C adapter with your phone when we're demanding USB-C in the device, this markets act notarizaton and "core fee" bullshit).
The most egregious behaviour is simply denying consumers the information they need to not pay ridiculous, even recurring, fees to Apple to use someone else's service. Fees they may have coerced the app developer into implementing, like Patreon, whilst simultaneously illegally depriving them of any alternative billing methods. Fees they testified are for doing nothing. Fees they testified carry 75% profit margin.
>Yeah sorry IANAL, the fact stands: EU thinks Apple is exploiting their market position to lock users down, EU doesn't like it and will make Apple comply.
This is moving the goalposts. Both my comment and the comment you first replied to was making normative statements about government policy, not questioning whether they have the authority to make such laws.
You jumped in into a question asked to someone else, I won't go into a pie throwing contest over an insignificant detail you care to win about, I don't have the grey text.
"Pretty outrageous" is good enough for me, if Microsoft tried to start charging for access to Win32 it would not succeed in any way, legal or with customers (it would be abusing market power), but because Apple has a strong hold on their users already they're supposed to just fall over and be fucked by fees that completely ruin any kind of "not very monetizeable" app because of their made up business rules? Markets are regulated everywhere, why should Apple be treated differently because they started from a different position?
